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FFmpeg adds Blu-ray and ProRes support

The FFmpeg developers have announced the first major update to the open source audio and video codecs package since January. FFmpeg 0.11, code-named "Happiness", includes several new encoders and decoders for additional video formats including Blu-ray and Apple's ProRes. A significant number of bugs have also been fixed.

Following the footsteps of the MythTV project, which added Blu-ray capabilities in version 0.24, the FFmpeg developers have also added support for the protocol in their tool collection. This should bring the capability to play back Blu-ray content to the many Linux applications that use FFmpeg to encode and decode video and audio files.

FFmpeg 0.11 also includes an encoder for Apple's ProRes format, which supports resolutions up to 4K. Other additions to the software include decoders for WMA Lossless and RealAudio Lossless files. Transcoding support for the v408 pixel format in QuickTime and Microsoft's AYUV Uncompressed has also been added. Furthermore, the developers have made the libavfilter API mandatory for running FFmpeg, and the program now supports full audio filtering via libavfilter.

More information and a complete list of changes, including the addition of several other media formats, can be found on the FFmpeg site and in the change log for this release. FFmpeg is licensed under the LGPL or GPL depending upon the configuration used and its source code can be downloaded from the project's site. The developers recommend that all users update their version of FFmpeg to this release as soon as possible.